Color Grading

Color Grading

Two jobs, in order, never reversed: correct (make it technically right and consistent) then grade (give it a look). A beautiful look on top of an uncorrected, mismatched timeline falls apart the moment shots cut together.

Trust the scopes, not your eyes

Your monitor and your eyes adapt and lie. Read the scopes:

• Waveform — exposure and contrast. Blacks should sit near 0 (but not crushed below), highlights near 100 IRE (but not clipped) unless the look calls for otherwise.
• Parade (RGB waveform) — white balance. Neutral whites/grays have R, G, B aligned. If blue rides high in the shadows, you have a cool cast.
• Vectorscope — hue and saturation. Skin tones fall along the skin-tone line (the I-line, ~11 o'clock). If skin drifts off it, fix it — audiences forgive anything except wrong skin.

Order of operations

1. Set exposure — get the overall brightness right (lift/gamma/gain or offset). Anchor mid-tones.
2. Balance white — remove color casts so neutrals are neutral. Use the parade and a known-gray reference.
3. Recover contrast — set black point and white point. For log/flat footage, this is where it comes alive.
4. Secondary / targeted fixes — qualify and adjust specific elements (skin, sky, a jacket) with masks/qualifiers and power windows. Track them if the shot moves.
5. Build the look — now, and only now, push toward mood (see below).
6. Match shots — make every shot in a scene feel like the same time and place.

Log and LUTs

• Log footage (S-Log, V-Log, Log-C) looks flat and gray by design — it preserves dynamic range. Don't grade it raw; either apply a conversion LUT to Rec.709 as a starting point or do a manual conversion, then grade.
• Apply technical/conversion LUTs early (input transform) and creative LUTs late (look). Grade your correction under the creative LUT so the LUT receives well-balanced input — LUTs amplify whatever you feed them.
• A LUT is a starting point, not a grade. Always adjust after.

Building a look

State the mood in words first, then translate it:

• Warm / nostalgic — push gain warm, lift slightly warm, gentle highlight roll-off, lower contrast, slightly lifted blacks (a "film" milkiness).
• Cold / tense — cool shadows, desaturated, harder contrast, crushed-ish blacks.
• Teal-and-orange — warm skin/highlights against cool shadows. Effective but clichéd; use restraint and protect skin.
• High-key / clean — bright, low contrast, soft, airy. Lifestyle, beauty, tech.
• Low-key / moody — deep shadows, selective light, rich saturation in the highlights only.

Levers: lift (shadows), gamma (mids), gain (highlights) for tonal range; hue vs hue / hue vs sat curves for surgical color; saturation and contrast for overall punch. Move shadows and highlights in opposite hue directions for cinematic color contrast.

Shot matching

When shots in a scene don't match:

1. Pick the hero shot (best-lit, most correct) as the reference.
2. Match every other shot's scopes to it — exposure first, then white balance, then saturation.
3. Compare with a split-screen / shot-match view, focusing on skin and neutral surfaces.
4. Check the cut in motion, not just on stills — perceived match changes with movement.

Protect the image

• Don't over-saturate. Clipped saturation looks cheap and can break broadcast/codec limits.
• Watch for banding in skies and gradients — heavy grading on 8-bit footage reveals it. Add subtle grain if needed.
• Stay legal for the deliverable — broadcast often caps at 100 IRE / specific gamuts. Web Rec.709 is more forgiving but still respect 0–100.
• Keep skin believable. Everything else is negotiable.

Output format

## Grade plan:  → 

Deliverable:    Source: 

### Correction (per shot)
- Exposure: 
- White balance: 
- Contrast: 

### Look (nodes/layers, in order)
1.  —  — 
...

### Shot matching
- Hero shot:   → 

### Cautions
- 

Name the mood in plain words before any numbers, and flag where footage limits (bit depth, clipping, codec) will cap how far the look can go.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: rakibulism
• Source: rakibulism/agent-skills-os
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://agent-skills-os.vercel.app

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.